


Time Will Crawl

by TheNightling



Category: The Sandman (Comics)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-01
Updated: 2020-02-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 18:33:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22510288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheNightling/pseuds/TheNightling
Summary: This story is to give you an idea of what Morpheus' time in captivity was like for him.
Kudos: 9





	Time Will Crawl

Time Will Crawl 

Disclaimer: This is a Sandman fan fiction. The Sandman belongs to Neil Gaiman and DC Comics. I own nothing.

Come! Come! Come! 

He felt the words as surely as he heard them, faint and echoing in the void. Old magick. It had felt it like a tugging at his very soul. He was too weak to resist the pulling that dragged him down, down, down… Forcibly pulling at his essence. 

He fell forward and slammed into hard flooring. He was disorientated at the sudden presence of gravity. He could feel the magick of the binding circle sealing him in, closing him off from all those who had a psychic link with him within his realm. He saw them, the mortal occultists, in their dark robes, as they moved to get a closer look at their prisoner. They moved like a swarm of insects. He blinked his completely-black eyes behind the tinted lenses of his helm. The tiny star pupils the only hint that there was more than mere darkness to be seen in his eyes. 

He lay there, stunned and …and so very tired… He had never felt so weary in his long life… He had struggled so hard against the summoning magick and now he could barely keep his eyes open. Someone grasped at the helm he wore with both hands. Someone was raising his head, carefully. They were pulling the helm free of his head. He felt his own dark fall around his bone-white face. His cloak was taken. Now he actually felt the cool, damp of the cellar in English summer time. Never mind about the cloak. That could easily be replaced. He could conjure another… as soon as he was free he could conjure another... 

He blinked. The ruby amulet was snatched and finally the pouch that he loathed to be without. He felt more naked without that pouch than without raiment. That he could not allow. He summoned what strength he had left and sat up to reach for the pouch. He stopped as if there was an invisible wall in front of him. He could not pass the edge of the magical binding circle, which was on the ground around him, and he knew it. His belongings were just out of reach…

So tired… So very tired… The room was growing dim and the floor was strangely inviting. He fainted. 

Trapped. Observe. Threats. Patience. Patience… Patience…

It had been years since that first night. It was midnight though it might as well have been noon down in that dungeon. There were no windows. He hadn’t seen this world’s sun in almost twenty-three-years. The only reason he was certain it was midnight was because he had become too familiar with the times at which his guards were swapped out for two new ones. Their shifts were in six hour intervals. Sometimes only three hours. He could only guess at the circumstances that brought about the occasional change. Occasional holidays perhaps? It did not matter.

Mortals tend to have this lovely fantasy that time moves differently for creatures such as himself, being ageless and (for all intents and purposes) immortal. If only that was that case… If only he could blink and it would seem a century had passed. No. Sadly, this fantasy was merely that, a fantasy. As mortals age they perceive time differently from when they were children. In childhood summers would seem to go on and on. As adults, however, whole decades seemed too short and so they imagine that is how time must be for immortals, an ever increasing sense that this or that passage of time was nothing to them. If only that was the case…

No. He felt time. He felt time the way mortals do. Time moved no differently for his kind as it does for mortals. And in prison it crawled at a snail’s pace. Perhaps it was even worse for him because, as the living embodiment of dreams, he usually did not sleep. That meant the third of the day that human prisoners could escape their bonds by entering his world, he could do no such thing. There was no relief.

He sat on the floor of the crystalline cage they had placed around him. The curved glass around him reminded him of a goldfish bowl or crystal ball. How menacing the mortals managed to seem when looming over him outside of the crystal, where light and size were distorted from his quartz-crystal prison and shadows hung heavy over the glass. 

Quartz crystal has innate power. It can contain and confine magick. It held him as surely as the binding circle around his cage. They were clever to make his cage out of crystal. Everyone knows most mineral and glass come from sand. Burnt and reshaped sand. The thing that he used to sculpt dreams now worked as his cage. 

He was hungry. They had never thought to feed him and he was not about to ask. He was far too proud for that. And he would not give them the satisfaction to show them that he suffered for not eating. It would not kill him but he still suffered for it.  
He tried not to think about the hunger, that empty feeling gnawing within himself. Eager to eat just about anything. Even a baked potato would have been nice. Do the English still bake potatoes? He wondered.   
He could imagine the taste. The skin cooked so thoroughly that it was like parchment around the soft white inside that could be crushed by the pressing of a fork. Flavored with salt, pepper, butter, sour cream. Perhaps some mild cheddar cheese and crushed bacon. He wasn’t one for heavy meals but this simple one that he imagined seemed divine. He could practically taste it. No. He would go mad if he let himself think about the hunger too long. Try to think about something else…

He thought of hob. He thought of the smell of the Kerosene lamps and the candle wax in the late Victorian pub. The strange sense of warmth and that feeling that was the direct opposite of being lonely. He missed that warmth. That sensation of… not-lonely.   
He missed Hob…   
He thought of his own wounded pride. The anger he had felt when Hob had suggested that they (Hob and Morpheus) were friends. How foolish he had been to not return to Hob sooner. Would he ever see his friend again?   
He longed to set things right- to do or say something subtle to admit Hob was right without actually saying the words that his pride did not want him to speak out loud. He thought of the clever ways he could acknowledge that yes, they were, in fact, friends without uttering an apology or acknowledgement of being wrong. He couldn’t dare admit, even to himself, that he was wrong. And it was Hob’s own fault, wasn’t it? He was the one who had to spoil things. He was the one who had to go and poke at the situation and demand confirmation. Why did he have to spoil it by making him have to call their situation a friendship?   
He missed him so much…

Morpheus blinked. He was no longer in the pub, storming away from Hob. He could no longer taste the wine on his lips. His memories were as vivid and real to him as dreams are for most people. It was as close as he could get to dreaming… remembering…   
He was back in his cage. Staring at the two guards just beyond the glass. Last year there had been a different set of guards sitting there at this hour. He had heard their names and he had known those previous guards as Bernie and Frank. 

There were usually two guards at a time watching him but one night Frank had to leave early. And so Bernie started to talk to him, which was surprising and different...  
Both men had been stocky. Frank had black hair while Bernie had sandy blond hair. 

“Guess Velma’s finally popped.” Bernie had said as if the woman was an over-inflated balloon. He gave a short chuckle.  
Was he talking to himself? Morpheus had wondered. He turned his head slightly at Bernie in a nonverbal acknowledgement of his presence.   
“Don’t know if you understand me but… you don’t look like you’re dangerous. I mean no offense but you look like some scrawny kid. I don’t care if you are some sort of space invader, they shoulda at least given you a blanket. You’re human enough, even P.O.Ws get clothes.”  
Space invader? P.O.W? He raised an eyebrow. The man’s accent was American.  
“You do understand, don’t you? Look… I… Uh… I snatched the key from Burgess. I can get you out. I’d thought about doing it before just… I don’t know if you drink blood suck the lives outa people… I don’t know a damn thing about this… But you don’t seem threatening. I could let you out…”  
Morpheus had waited for the inevitable catch.  
“God, I hope you’re not like the aliens in Wells’ Radio Broadcast. I mean if keeping you here is the only thing stopping an invasion…”  
Morpheus stared at the man blankly, trying to figure out what he was talking about.  
“Ah, who am I kidding? You’ve been sitting in a glass box for decades. I’m sure if there are Martians or Venusians or whatever that are anything like you we could take ‘em. Just… Go back to wherever you came from, okay… If you try anything I know I out-weigh you. Hell, Old Roderick’s kitchen maid out-weighs you. Alex’s cat out-weighs you. The point is I could throw you down flat.”

There was a cat?

Morpheus stood up slowly. Was this a trick? Bernie slid the key into the lock of the cage and Morpheus saw the crystalline panel move for the first time.  
“Come on.” He said.  
Morpheus stepped forward but stopped just before he reached the open door of the cage. He couldn’t pass the circle. He looked down at it and then at Bernie.  
Bernie looked confused. “What’s wrong? Don’t ya wanna-“ And then he let out an anguished groan.  
Morpheus’ own eyes widened.  
Bernie had clutched at his chest, staggering back as if on invisible puppet strings. The old magus, Roderick Burgess, stood at the entrance to the cellar chamber. As frail and aged as he was he still had magick. Burgess’ hand clasped as if crushing something invisible. Morpheus understood the magick involved. He was crushing the poor man’s heart.  
Bernie fell to the floor dead. He almost looked asleep. 

The new guards arrived a few hours later… 

Morpheus blinked and he was back in the present and in the closed crystalline cage. And again he could feel the pain of gnawing and distracting hunger. He was suddenly curious about Delirium’s cuisine. He had never had a cotton candy soup before… or typewriter flavored marmalade. He tried not to think about his hunger… 

These new guards barely acknowledged him. The novelty of his existence had long ago worn off and his strangeness helped stave away pity and help secure his non-human status. From his bone-white skin and sold black eyes… They could see no humanity in him and so they showed no humanity toward him. 

How much time had passed? He could barely see the wristwatch of one of the two men watching him. They sat in folding chairs in front of the cage. One reading a newspaper, the other reading a pulp novel. It was exactly one minute after midnight…

Patience… 

Wait…

Soon…

That patience and waiting would pay off on the night the wheel of a wheel chair breached the binding circle that held him. With the circle breached he could enter the dream of one of his guards. And then he was able to trick his keepers into opening his cage by pretending to faint within his cell. It had been a long, long time coming but he was finally free.


End file.
